We're considering selling our house in Stratford and moving back to Hamilton and living in an apartment. So we have a few questions:

1. What are the best online sites for searching for apartments? Is kijiji.ca the best thing going?
2. We like the Durand area, for all of the obvious reasons. We're both freelance working from home, so environment is important. Are there other areas to consider?

Stratford is wonderfully charming and everything, but it's small. There's no Asian food here to speak of, for example. So we're weighing our options and thinking about a move back to Steeltown, but would like to monitor classified sites for a while to see what's out there.

Kijiji is the best. The last two apartments I found for a great deal were ones that had lousy or no pictures, but did have incredible location, price, and landlords One was on Craigslist, but it is a lot tougher to find good ones on it.

I like the areas highwater recommended- Dundurn South and Strathcona are also generally nice areas and relatively proximal to amenities

You know, having glanced at the MLS listings, it seems we could get an old-world Edwardian brick house for a song north or south of Barton east of Victoria. Are those areas "gentrifying" yet? Are any artist types from Toronto moving into those neighbourhoods?

Some streets are spectacular, the majority are going to take decades to start changing significantly.... most places are nowhere near gentrifying and the rate at which they will is almost always overestimated by out-of-towners.

There are a few streets that are, though. Some friends of ours just bought a house off Ottawa North near Barton - both are artists and graphic designers moving in from Toronto. I'm not too familiar with that area, but it seems to be feeding off the general Ottawa-Street revitalization occurring further south on it.

Also, between Main and King east of Victoria, there's a lot of crap - but there's also some spectacular streets on which the occasional fixer-upper pops up for unbelievable prices - e.g. on Barnesdale or Fairholt or Garfield, which have some really nice places and families living there. Go further north on the streets around that area, though, or slightly west or east, and the story's totally different.

The Bayfront's is becoming quite a nice area, but there are still a lot of fixer-uppers. A 2-bed fixer townhouse sold there for 85k last year and detached 3-bed fixer-uppers are still around $100k-$140k. Not a lot of the older stock, though.

You know, having glanced at the MLS listings, it seems we could get an old-world Edwardian brick house for a song north or south of Barton east of Victoria. Are those areas "gentrifying" yet? Are any artist types from Toronto moving into those neighbourhoods?

Just curious.

Anything as north as Barton St and east of Victoria is not gentrifying, and probably won't because it's too close to industry. If you want a nice Edwardian house in a nice neighbourhood, look a bit further south, probably at least south of Cannon and further east toward the Delta. If I came back to Hamilton I would look in the areas around Gage Park. Strathcona and the North End are pretty nice too. Kirkendall/Locke St area is nice but property is more expensive there.

Unfortunately none of the apartments that I searched for in Hamilton meets my standards, all old and outdated with horrible brown 70s laminate tiles. Looks like I’ll be living in Burlington in a few weeks.

Unfortunately none of the apartments that I searched for in Hamilton meets my standards, all old and outdated with horrible brown 70s laminate tiles. Looks like I’ll be living in Burlington in a few weeks.

Really? Where did you look?

We should switch jobs. I'd give my left nut for a job at Mac (or anywhere close) but am still stuck working in Burlington.

Unfortunately none of the apartments that I searched for in Hamilton meets my standards, all old and outdated with horrible brown 70s laminate tiles. Looks like I’ll be living in Burlington in a few weeks.

Uh oh, you'll have to change your screen name

I also had trouble finding a nice rental when I came to Hamilton, but they're out there.

Yea BoringTown or something haha. I may end up living there but I'll still work, shop, eat out and entertain in Hamilton.

It's actually in Aldershot so it's really part of Hamilton, moreso than Burlington. It's near Hidden Valley (great for a jogger like me), GO Station and near Mac.

The problem is that most of these apartments in Hamilton are geared towards seniors. This place has individual A/C and heating controls, own laundry room, dishwasher, gym, indoor pool, sauna, whirlpool, game room, etc. Apartments in Hamilton is like a no frill apartment, bare minimum.

I don't find viewit very good at all -- it's mostly companies trying to rent units, not individuals, and it's usually older midrise buildings. Kijiji is an OK source.

If you're looking for up-to-date decor, your best bet is probably to try and find a unit being rented out in one of the more recently built condos, or a landlord who's renting a house or converted one into apartments in a really good area.... they're out there, but you still pay accordingly.

It took a while to find a good rental here, and it had horrible pictures, but I did. They're out there.

The highrises here are mostly crap but there's so many nice 2nd and 3rd floors and low rise apartments in the south end. I'd guess they're often not well advertised because they don't need to be, but I'd probably see 2 or 3 for rent signs on the average trip. Maybe it's worth a drive through some side streets writing down numbers.

Thanks for the additional info. In 2000 I was tasked with finding an apartment for my wife and me while she was away, and I found a place by scouring the Spectator. Then in 2002 we walked around the neighbourhood we wanted to live in (Durand) and scouted out buildings and streets listed in the paper before calling them to view them.

We've become pickier with age, though. We will never willingly live below people again, so it's top floors or nothing. I imagine a nice duplex in Durand would fit the bill.

Though we're still not completely sure we're going to move. This summer will tell. I suppose the smart money would be on selling up and pocketing our "winnings," as we've had astoundingly low interest rates on our mortgage for the five years we've owned (between 2 and 3 percent) and the value of our house has grown by about 5 percent each year (if the price the realtor said she would list it at is anything to go by) You just know that the bubble is going to burst, or at least deflate, eventually.